, with no "effect" to aid him, and work it out,
boss by boss, only with such conventionality as its infinitude renders
unavoidable. We have seen that a literal facsimile is impossible, just
as a literal facsimile of the carving of an entire cathedral front is
impossible. But it is as vain to endeavor to give any conception of an
Alpine cliff without minuteness of detail, and by mere breadth of
effect, as it would be to give a conception of the facades of Rouen or
Rheims, without indicating any statues or foliation. When the statues
and foliation are once got, as much blue mist and thundercloud as you
choose, but not before.

Sec. 43. I commend, therefore, in conclusion, the precipice to the artist's
_patience_; to which there is this farther and final encouragement,
that, though one of the most difficult of subjects, it is one of the
kindest of sitters. A group of trees changes the color of its leafage
from week to week, and its position from day to day; it is sometimes
languid with heat, and sometimes heavy with rain; the torrent swells or
falls in shower or sun; the best leaves of the foreground may be dined
upon by cattle, or trampled by unwelcome investigators of the chosen
scene. But the cliff can neither be eaten nor trampled down; neither
bowed by the shower nor withered by the heat: it is always ready for us
when we are inclined to labor; will always wait for us when we would
rest; and, what is best of all, will always talk to us when we are
inclined to converse. With its own patient and victorious presence,
cleaving daily through cloud after cloud, and reappearing still through
the tempest drift, lofty and serene amidst the passing rents of blue, it
seems partly to rebuke, and partly to guard, and partly to calm and
chasten, the agitations of the feeble human soul that watches it; and
that must be indeed a dark perplexity, or a grievous pain, which will
not be in some degree enlightened or relieved by the vision of it, when
the evening shadows are blue on its foundation, and the last rays of the
sunset resting in the fair height of its golden Fortitude.

FOOTNOTES

[80] Distinguished from a _crest_ by being the _face_ of a large
contiguous bed of rock, not the end of a ridge.

[81] The contour of the whole cliff, seen from near its foot as it
rises above the shoulder of the Breven, is as at Fig. 76 opposite.
The part measured is _a d_; but the precipice recedes to the summit
_b_, on wh